Welcome to the deep dive. We are so glad to have
you with us today. Yeah, thank you for joining
us We have a really a really fascinating topic
lined up We really do but I want you to start
by doing a quick mental exercise for me If you
were to close your eyes right now What just picture
World War one? What is the very first image that
comes into your mind? For almost everyone. It's
it's gonna be the mud exactly the mud you are
probably imagining the endless waterlogged trenches
of the Western Front. You're picturing the rusted
barbed wire, the absolute stalemate, the gray
skies, and just the sheer... brutal immobility
of millions of men grinding against each other
for, you know, yards of shattered earth. It's
the dominant cultural memory of the First World
War. It's what we're taught in school. It is.
But today, I want you to take that mental picture
and completely throw it away. Just wipe the mud
from your mind. Because we are going to a completely
different theater of war, one that operated by
entirely different rules. We are heading to the
shifting sands, the ancient sun -based plains
and the thundering cavalry charges of the Middle
East. Today, we are taking a deep dive into the
Battle of Megiddo. Fought over just a few incredibly
intense days between September 19th and September
25th, 1918. And it really is a complete paradigm
shift from what we traditionally associate with
that war. Our mission for this deep dive is to
synthesize all the tactical maneuvers, the grand
strategies, and the on -the -ground realities
of this battle. Right. And we're pulling from
a very comprehensive breakdown. We have sources
detailing the prelude, the belligerence, the
specific tactics used, and the aftermath of Megiddo.
And to give you a sense of scale right up front,
this isn't just another engagement in a long
grinding war. This is the final fatal blow to
an entire empire. Yes, we are talking about the
utter destruction of the Ottoman Empire's military
presence in the region. And what we want to extract
for you today is the ultimate blueprint of strategic
deception and mobile warfare. We're going to
explore how a World War I battle, fought on ancient
biblical ground, actually laid the very foundations
for the Blitzkrieg tactics of the modern era.
It's a story of fake armies, literal piles of
gold. Deliberate communication blackouts. Exactly.
And speeds of maneuver that the world had simply
never seen before. It really is a master class
in operational art. It is. But to understand
how this masterpiece was painted, we first have
to look at the canvas itself. The geography here
is absolutely vital. You cannot understand the
Battle of Megiddo without understanding the ground
it was fought on. OK, let's unpack this, because
the ancient fortress of Megiddo stands on a hill
known as Telmogito, right? Correct. It sits right
at the mouth of the Musmus Pass, and geographically,
it completely controls the roads to the north
and to the interior. It dominates a massive flat
land known as the Plain of Armageddon. Which
is also called the Plain of Estrelaan. And just
pausing that for a second, the Plain of Armageddon.
It carries quite a weight, doesn't it? It really
does. General Edmund Allenby, the British commander
we are going to be talking a lot about today,
he specifically chose the name Battle of Megiddo
for its biblical and symbolic resonance. Even
though very limited fighting actually took place
right at Tel Megiddo itself. Exactly. But this
is ground that has seen warfare since the dawn
of recorded history. I mean, everyone from the
ancient Egyptians to Napoleon fought their way
across these exact same planes. It's like the
ultimate historical chessboard. It's a geographical
choke point. Throughout human history, if you
wanted to move an army from Egypt up into Syria
or Mesopotamia, you had to go through this area.
And by 1918. By 1918, this plane linked the Jordan
Valley on one side and the plane of Sharon on
the other. It was sitting about 40 miles behind
the Ottoman front lines. So they formed a massive
semicircle around the main Ottoman positions.
Right, which were dug into the Regidudian hills.
If you could control that plane, you controlled
the movement, the supply, and frankly, the survival
of entire armies. So that is the chessboard.
Let's talk about the players. On the Entente,
or allied side, we have the Egyptian Expeditionary
Force. Usually just referred to as the EEF. The
EEF, right. And it's important to understand
that they did not have an easy road to get to
this point. In the early years of the war, 1915
and 1916, they were purely on the defensive.
They had to stop Ottoman attacks on the Suez
Canal. And we really cannot overspate the strategic
importance of the Suez Canal to the listener.
For the British Empire, the canal was the jugular
vein. Vital artery. Yes, linking Britain to its
vast resources and manpower in India, Australia
and New Zealand. If the Ottomans had managed
to capture it or even just block it, the British
global war effort would have been severely, maybe
fatally crippled. Absolutely. So under their
original commander, General Archibald Murray,
the EEF manages to secure the canal and push
the Ottomans back across the Sinai Peninsula.
But then Murray hits a wall. He does. He gets
bogged down and loses the first and second battles
of Gaza in 1917. The momentum completely stalls
out. Which is the moment when London decides
a change in leadership is absolutely necessary.
Enter General Edmund Allenby. Allenby arrives
and brings a completely renewed, aggressive energy
to the theater. He reorganizes the force, breaks
through the Ottoman lines at the Third Battle
of Gaza, and by December 1917, he achieves a
massive, symbolic and strategic victory. He captures
Jerusalem? He captures Jerusalem, he has the
momentum, he has the morale. He is prepping for
the knockout blow. But then, the strategic reality
of a global war crashes down on him. Just a few
months later, In March 1918, the German army
launches a massive spring offensive back in Europe
on the Western Front. The Allied lines in France
are buckling under the pressure. And the shockwaves
of that crisis in Europe hit Allenby directly
in the Middle East. The War Office in London
realizes they are facing a potential collapse
in France. So they send an urgent directive to
Allenby. He is ordered to immediately send his
best, most experienced troops back to the Western
Front to plug the gaps. So how big of a loss
are we talking about here? Because if you are
planning a massive offensive, losing your veterans
has to be devastating. It's a catastrophic drain
on his resources. Allenby is forced to send approximately
60 ,000 officers and men out of the Middle East
theater entirely. 60 ,000. 60 ,000. To break
that down, he loses two complete infantry divisions,
24 additional infantry battalions, nine cavalry
regiments, and he loses all of his tanks. Okay,
let's unpack this because if we think about this
in modern strategic terms, it is a nightmare
scenario. Imagine you are a modern theater commander
or even a CEO, right? Sure. You've been a year
perfectly tuning a massive combined arms offensive.
You secured your foothold. You are ready to launch.
And suddenly top command calls and says, there's
a crisis elsewhere. We are taking away your entire
air support wing, all of your special operations
groups and your two most experienced armor divisions.
But We still expect you win. It's a monumental
setback. Allenby is essentially stripped of his
veteran corps right as he needs them most. He
is left with a skeletal framework of his original
army. So what does he do? Well, he has to completely
rebuild his force from scratch throughout the
spring and summer of 1918. To replace the truce
he lost, he brings in two British Indian Army
cavalry divisions and two Indian infantry divisions
that had been fighting over in the Mesopotamian
campaign. Oh, wow. And he also reforms four of
his remaining infantry divisions on the British
Indian Army pattern. What does that pattern actually
look like in practice? It means that within a
single brigade, you would have three Indian battalions
and one British battalion fighting alongside
each other. The diversity of this rebuilt force
is staggering to think about. I mean, you look
at this and you have British troops, Indian troops
from various regions, Australians and New Zealanders.
African forces as well. Right. You even have
a brigade sized detachment of French troops attached
to the 54th division. Imagine the sheer logistical,
communicative and cultural challenge of getting
all these different groups into one unified command
structure. It's an immense hurdle. You are dealing
with different languages, different dietary requirements,
different equipment standards and vastly different
training backgrounds. It must have been chaos
initially. You have seasoned British officers
trying to integrate with Indian cavalrymen who
have just arrived from a completely different
desert campaign. It requires an intense, exhausting
period of reorganization and retraining throughout
the grueling summer heat of 1918. And Allenby
is desperately trying to forge this disparate
multinational group into a unified weapon that
can strike with precision. Yes. And while Allenby
is trying to piece his army back together, we
need to look across the trench lines at his opponent.
The Ottoman forces. They were organized under
what was called the Yildirim Army Group. And
I love this detail. Yildirim translates to Thunderbolt.
It does. They had actually originally been formed
to go recapture Baghdad from the British, but
the situation in Palestine got so dire they were
diverted to face Allenby instead. And the leadership
dynamic within the Yildirim Army Group is highly
complex and fraught with internal conflict, isn't
it? Highly fraught. Originally, this army group
was commanded by a very prominent German general
named Erich von Falkenhayn. Now, Falkenhayn had
a very specific philosophy for how to fight this
war in the desert. He wanted to employ what he
called a yielding defense. What does that actually
mean for the soldiers on the ground? A yielding
defense is essentially a strategy of trading
space for time and preservation. Falkenhayn believed
that holding static, rigid positions in the vastness
of the Middle East was a mistake. Why? Because
his philosophy was to let the British attack,
let them punch themselves out and extend their
supply lines across the harsh terrain, while
the Ottoman forces would conduct organized tactical
retreats to shorten their own supply lines. He
didn't want to hold ground at all costs. It's
like a boxer playing rope -a -dope. You lean
back against the ropes, let the opponent exhaust
themselves swinging, and you only strike back
when they are completely overextended. That's
a great analogy. But the Ottoman officers absolutely
hated Falkenhayn for this, didn't they? They
despised the strategy. From the perspective of
the Ottoman commanders, this was their sovereign
territory being surrendered. They blamed Falkenhayn
directly for the loss of Jerusalem, which was
a massive psychological blow. The friction between
the German High Command and the Ottoman officers
became so toxic that a change had to be made.
Command of the Yildirim Army Group shifts to
another German general, Otto Leiman von Sanders.
And Leiman von Sanders comes in and completely
reverses Falkenhayn's philosophy. He decides
he isn't going to retreat another inch. He plants
his feet and orders the entire Ottoman army to
dig in and hold the line. Exactly. It seems incredibly
stubborn. I mean, if your supply lines are stretched
and you're facing a massive allied force, wouldn't
a tactical retreat save your army from being
encircled? What's fascinating here is the underlying
reasoning behind Lyman von Sanders' decision.
It was not a purely military calculation. It
was heavily dictated by political and psychological
realities. Tell me more about that. A Lyman reasoned
that if he ordered his armies to keep retreating
through Palestine, it would completely shatter
the morale of the Ottoman troops who were already
exhausted and under supply. Miral was already
hanging by a thread. Right. He also knew a long
retreat would ruin their draft animals, which
were essential for moving artillery and supplies.
But there was an even bigger fear looming in
the background, wasn't there? A major geopolitical
fear. Precisely. Lyman knew that a visible Ottoman
retreat would act like a dinner bell for the
Arab revolt. If the Ottomans looked weak and
were falling back, it would encourage the Arab
uprising to spread further north into the Ottoman
rear areas in Syria. I see. Furthermore, a retreat
in Palestine would completely cut off and isolate
the Ottoman forces that were stationed much further
south in the Hejaz region. It's a profound modern
dilemma that leaders still face today. I mean,
do you take a short -term tactical loss, falling
back to a position that is cheaper and easier
to defend, if it risks a massive long -term PR
and political disaster? That's exactly the choice
he was facing. Lyman von Sanders essentially
decided that the optics and the political fallout
of a retreat were far more dangerous than the
military risk of holding a wide, very thin line
against a superior force. And we really need
to emphasize just how thin that line was. Lyman's
defense consisted of three armies. You had the
Eighth Army holding the Mediterranean coast,
the Seventh Army entrenched in the rugged Judean
hills in the center, and the Fourth Army guarding
the Jordan River and the territory to the east.
included the vital city of Amman and the Hujaz
Railway. So they are spread across a massive
geographic front. By August 1918, Lyman's actual
frontline fighting strength was just over 40
,000 infantrymen. Across that whole front. Across
that whole front. Now, they were heavily armed.
They had a formidable array of machine guns and
artillery. But because they were stretched across
such a vast distance, they had virtually no strategic
reserve stationed behind the front lines. They
were a hard shell with a hollow center, which
brings us perfectly to the eastern flank and
the absolute logistical headache that the Ottomans
were dealing with out there. If Lenman von Sanders
was terrified of the Arab revolt spreading, he
had incredibly good reason. He certainly me did.
Because operating east of the Jordan River, you
have the forces of the Arab Northern Army. They
are under the overall leadership of Emir Faisal.
and fighting alongside them is a very famous
British liaison officer named T .E. Lawrence.
Who history remembers as Lawrence of Arabia.
Right. The role of the Arab revolt in this campaign
is a brilliant study in asymmetric irregular
warfare. They were not fighting set peace trench
battles. Their primary obsessive target was the
Hejaz Railway. Why the railway? Why not attack
the Ottoman cities directly? Because the railway
was the literal lifeline of the Ottoman Empire
in that specific region. It was the only viable
way of supplying the Ottoman troops stationed
all the way down in Medina. So cut the line,
starve the troops. Yes. By blockading isolated
garrisons like the one at Milan and by constantly
blowing up stretches of the tracks, the Arab
forces were forcing the Ottomans to tie down
massive numbers of troops. So instead of fighting
be on the front line, thousands of Ottoman soldiers
were sitting in the desert desperately trying
to protect metal rails from being dynamited in
the middle of the night. That's the essence of
their impact. But let's pull back the curtain
on what a rebellion actually cost to maintain.
We have this highly romanticized cinematic image
of brave warriors riding dromedary camels across
the sweeping dunes fighting purely for freedom
and independence. And while that ideological
drive absolutely existed, a sustained rebellion
requires vast amounts of cold, hard resources.
Exactly. The British were financing this uprising
and the numbers are just staggering. The financial
commitment is a crucial piece of the strategic
puzzle here. In mid -1916, the British began
subsidizing the Arab forces with 30 ,000 pounds
a month. That's a lot of money back then. And
importantly, this was always paid in solid coin,
gold, and silver. Paper money was utterly useless
in the desert economy. Wow. By the time we reached
the Megiddo Offensive in late 1918, that subsidy
had ballooned to an astonishing 220 ,000 pounds
a month. Just imagine the pure logistical nightmare
of that. They are literally shipping hundreds
of thousands of pounds in heavy metal coins across
a hostile desert landscape every single month
just to keep the local forces supplied and motivated.
It's incredible to picture. And it wasn't just
cash, was it? No, it was a massive material investment.
Alongside the gold, the British were supplying
armored cars, specialized Indian machine gun
attachments, French Algerian mountain artillery
batteries, and thousands upon thousands of dromedary
camels to keep the forces mobile. It was an enormous
drain on the British treasury to keep this proxy
force active in the Ottoman rear. It really was.
Which brings up a fascinating debate for you
as you listen to this. Think about how organizations
allocate massive budgets today. If you are funding
a massive proxy initiative, you want to know
your return on investment. Was 220 ,000 pounds
in gold a month worth it to keep the Ottomans
constantly looking over their shoulder? Well,
even within the Allied command structure, there
were highly conflicting viewpoints on the actual
value of the Arab forces. It is essential to
look at both perspectives here to understand
the tension of the time. Sure. On one side of
the argument, you have the view of T .E. Lawrence
and his supporters. From their perspective, the
Arab regular forces were highly effective. They
successfully blockaded the Ottoman garrison at
Messun. They managed to blow up an 80 -mile stretch
of the railway around a station called Mudawara.
80 miles of track destroyed. According to Lawrence,
they effectively paralyzed Ottoman operations
in that entire southern sector, undeniably destroying
critical infrastructure. But that is not how
everyone saw it. Because you have conventional
military officers who are highly skeptical of
the whole operation. We have a direct quote from
an officer named Rex Hall, who served with the
5th Light Horse Brigade. What did he say? He
said, and I quote, I do not for one moment denigrate
the good name of Lawrence. But when it came to
cooperation with Allenby's forces, the Arabs
under Lawrence had, in my experience, nuisance.
value only. Nuisance value only. That quote perfectly
encapsulates the classic historical friction
between highly disciplined conventional military
forces and loosely organized irregular guerrilla
units. Oh so? If you are a conventional cavalry
officer like Rex Hall, you are trained to look
for reliable punctual flank support in a tightly
scheduled set piece battle. When you look at
an unpredictable tribal force that fights on
its own terms and its own schedule, you might
perceive them as nothing more than a nuisance.
But Allenby is looking at the board from a much
higher elevation. Exactly. From a grand strategic
level, Allenby recognized the sheer mathematical
value of the proxy war. He knew that every single
Ottoman battalion deployed to guard a railway
station in the deep desert was a battalion that
was not standing in front of his infantry on
the Plain of Sharon. Math doesn't lie. Whether
they were a nuisance or a lethal threat, they
were bleeding the Ottomans of manpower and attention.
Keep that proxy war and that Eastern distraction
in mind because it plays directly into Allenby's
ultimate master plan. Allenby is sitting there
with his rebuilt, highly diverse army. He knows
the Ottomans are stressed thin along a massive
line from the Mediterranean Sea in the west all
the way into the Judean hills in the east. How
does he break that line? Allenby's true strategic
intention was incredibly bold. and it relied
on overwhelming localized force. He wanted to
mass the vast majority of his infantry on the
extreme western edge of the front line, right
against the Mediterranean coast. The hammer.
His plan was to concentrate a massive hammer
there, smash through the thinly held Ottoman
trenches, and then send his mobile cavalry, the
desert mounted corps, rushing north through the
resulting gap. The goal wasn't just to push the
Ottomans back. No, it was to send the cavalry
deep into the rear to cut off the retreat of
the entire Ottoman seventh and eighth armies.
To achieve this, Allenby managed to build up
a localized force superiority on the coast of
roughly five to one in infantry. He had five
of his men for every one Ottoman defender in
that specific sector. That is an overwhelming
tactical advantage. It's massive. But here's
the massive problem. If you start moving tens
of thousands of men. thousands of horses and
hundreds of artillery pieces to the coast. The
enemy is going to notice they aren't blind. Exactly.
They see you mask on the right. They would just
shift their own troops to meet you. And your
five to one advantage completely disappears,
which means Allen B has to completely blind Lyman
von Sanders. He has to convince the Ottoman High
Command that the attack is coming from the exact
opposite direction in the Jordan Valley, far
to the east. The operation he orchestrates to
achieve this. is one of the most comprehensive
military deceptions in history. It really is.
The level of operational security and pure theatrical
deception they pull off here is staggering. It's
like a massive analog cyber spoofing campaign.
How did they do it? The fundamental rule for
the entire British Army was simple but incredibly
hard to execute. Any movement of troops vehicles
or artillery from the eastern Jordan Valley westward
towards the true attack zone on the coast had
to be done in total pitch black darkness at night.
No lights. None. They had to hide in orange groves
and olive plantations during the day. But any
movement eastward towards the fake attack zone
was to be done openly, brazenly, in broad daylight.
It was a monumental logistical ballet, and it
involved incredible acts of misdirection. For
example, the Anzac Mounted Division was stationed
in the Jordan Valley, and they were tasked with
acting like an entire massive attack corps. They
were the actors. Yes. They would march openly
down into the valley during the day, making sure
the Ottoman observers on the hills could clearly
see them arriving. Then as soon as the sun went
down, Those same men would be secretly packed
into transport lorries, driven back out of the
valley under the cover of darkness, just so they
could march back down again the next day. It's
a literal military loop. They're just cycling
the same troops over and over to look like a
massive buildup. And they didn't just use moving
men. They built sprawling, elaborate dummy camps
in the east. They set up massive canvas structures
that, from the vantage point of an Ottoman scout
on a distant hill, looked exactly like vast horse
lines for a cavalry division. But the most ingenious
detail of this entire deception and a true testament
to practical military problem solving involved
dealing with dust. The dust problem. The British
commanders knew that a massive army moving through
the dry desert kicks up colossal clouds of dust.
It is the signature of an army on the march.
If you have dummy camps but no dust, the illusion
fails. Exactly. So they commandeered mules and
had them drag heavy agricultural harrow's tools
meant for breaking up soil back and forth along
the dirt tracks in the east all day long. Here's
where it gets really interesting. They are literally,
physically throwing dust in the enemy's eyes
to simulate the marching collars of an army that
doesn't actually exist. And the theatricality
didn't stop the front lines. They commandeered
a highly prominent hotel in Jerusalem and ostentatiously
set it up as a fake Expeditionary Force headquarters.
Making sure enemy spies knew exactly where it
was. Right. The intelligence manipulation was
multi -layered. Out in the east, T .E. Lawrence
sent agents to loudly and publicly buy up huge
quantities of sheep and horse forage, signaling
to Ottoman spies that a massive allied cavalry
force was preparing to operate in that area.
They even planted fake stories in the British
newspapers and deliberately broadcast intercepted
messages about a major military horse race meeting
that was scheduled to take place on September
19th, which, coincidentally, was the exact day
Allen B actually planned to launch his massive
assault on the coast. They wanted the Ottomans
to think. The British can't be attacking. They're
getting ready for a horse race. It is a comprehensive,
multi -domain deception. They are actively manipulating
visual intelligence, signals intelligence, and
human intelligence. But if we connect this to
the bigger picture, we have to acknowledge a
fundamental truth about warfare. What's that?
None of this elaborate theater, the canvas horses,
the dragging heros, the fake headquarters, none
of it matters if the enemy can simply fly an
airplane over your lines and see the truth for
themselves. Deception on this scale only works
if the enemy is entirely deprived of the means
to verify it. Yes, you have to blind the eye
in the sky. And this is where air superiority
becomes the absolute linchpin of the whole operation.
The Royal Air Force, alongside the Australian
Flying Corps, was tasked with completely dominating
the skies west of the Jordan River. They had
to ensure no German or Ottoman reconnaissance
plane could see what was happening on the coast.
And they achieved absolute dominance. The flight
statistics tell the story clearly. Let's hear
the numbers. In June of 1918, hostile enemy airplanes
crossed over the British lines roughly 100 times
in a single week. So they had a clear view of
the battlefield. They did. But then the RAF and
the Australians went to work. They relentlessly
hunted down enemy aircraft. By the last week
of August, that number had dropped from 100 crossings
a week to just 18. Wow. And during the critical
three -week buildup in September, right before
the attack, the total number of enemy flights
dropped to exactly four. For 18 days before the
battle, only two or three German aircraft were
seen flying at all. They practically grounded
the entire enemy air force. Ottoman and German
planes couldn't even start their engines without
being immediately engaged by allied fighters.
It is a total intelligence blackout. Think about
the modern equivalent of this. If you are running
a massive global business, and your competitor
manages to completely blackout your market research,
sever your data feeds, and shut down your communication
servers, You are making critical decisions in
a total vacuum. You only see the reality that
they want you to see. Because of this absolute
air supremacy, Lyman von Sanders and the Ottomans
never saw the massive five to one concentration
of troops hiding in the Orange Groves on the
coast. They only saw the dummy camps and the
dragging arrows in the east. And that profound
engineered information asymmetry sets the stage
for the battle itself. Which brings us to September
16th, 1918. The hammer is finally raised. As
a preliminary opening move, the Arab Northern
Army under Lawrence attacks the vital railway
junction at Dara. far behind the Ottoman lines
to the east. This is the final distraction. Lawrence
and his forces, joined by thousands of local
tribesmen, start tearing up the rail lines and
attacking the garrison. And Lyman von Sanders
reacts exactly how Allenby hoped he would. He
views the attack on Dora as the prelude to the
main assault he expects from the Jordan Valley.
So he takes the bait. He takes the bait. Lyman
sends the garrison from a crucial central town
called Awafule eastward to reinforce Dora, pulling
vital troops away from the very area where the
real blow was going to land. It seems like Allenby's
trap has worked perfectly. But despite all the
brilliant deception and air supremacy, the fog
of war is never perfectly dense. There's always
a wild card. Oh, a wild card. At the very last
minute, an Indian deserter from the Allied lines
crosses over the trenches and surrenders to the
Turks. And this deserter tells them everything.
He warns them that a massive, overwhelming attack
is coming directly at the coastal sector. This
is such an incredible moment of historical drama.
It really is. I want you to imagine this scenario.
You are Rifat Bey. You are the commander of the
Ottoman Exitate Corps stationed right on the
coast. An enemy deserter is brought into your
tent and he literally hands you the exact enemy
playbook. He tells you a colossal force of infantry
and cavalry is massing just a few miles right
in front of your trenches. Ruffet Bay listens
to the deserter and he believes him. He realizes
his men are sitting in a deathtrap. He wants
to withdraw his forces immediately to pull them
back into the hills where they can survive. But
he can't just order a retreat on his own. He
has to run it up the flagpole. He reports this
explosive intelligence to his immediate boss,
Javed Pasha, and to the overall army commander,
Lyman von Sanders. And their response is fatal.
They tell Rafet Bey no. They explicitly forbid
him to withdraw his troops. Lemon von Sanders
is entirely convinced that this deserter is a
planted intelligence bluff. He has bought into
the Jordan Valley Deception so thoroughly and
for so long that he dismisses the absolute truth
when it is handed to him on a silver platter.
Have you ever been in a situation, maybe in a
company or an organization, where a lower level
employee or whistleblower points out a massive
fatal flaw in the system, but senior management
flat out refuses to listen because the truth
contradicts the preconceived strategy. It's the
exact same psychological trap. Lyman's refusal
to act on this intelligence, his confirmation
bias, essentially dooms his entire army. Because
just a few days later, the reality of the situation
arrives. On September 19th at 1 vr a .m. in the
pitch black of the night, the true offensive
begins. And it doesn't begin with a cavalry charge
or an artillery barrage. It begins from the sky.
A single British heavy bomber, a massive aircraft
for its time called the Handley Page 0400 takes
off. It flies deep over the Ottoman lines and
drops its full payload of 16 112 pound bombs
directly onto the main telephone exchange and
railway station at Alafule. 16 112 pound bombs.
For a listener today, that might not sound like
a nuclear payload, but in 1918, this isn't just
dropping explosives to cause random casualties.
This is a highly precise surgical decapitation
strike. Alafule was the central nervous system
for the Ottoman defense. By destroying that single
telephone exchange, the British instantly severed
the communication lines between Lyman von Sanders's
central headquarters in Nazareth and the entire
Ottoman Seventh and Eighth Armies at the front.
This raises an important question regarding modern
warfare and organizational structure. If you
instantly remove the ability of a command center
to communicate with its extremities, how quickly
does a cohesive structure dissolve into isolated,
paralyzed units? The Ottomans were about to find
out in the most brutal way possible because for
two vital days, Lyman von Sanders had no idea
what was happening to his front lines. And what
was happening was annihilation. Three and a half
hours after those bombs fell at 430 a .m. on
September 19th, the silence of the early morning
is shattered. 385 allied guns open up simultaneously
on the coastal defenses. We're talking field
artillery, heavy 60 pounders, medium howitzers,
and they even had two naval destroyers offshore
firing massive shells into the Ottoman trenches
from the Mediterranean. The earth is literally
shaking. But the nature of this bombardment is
critical to understand. Unlike the massive week
-long bombardments of the Western Front that
just churned the mud and gave the enemy plenty
of warning to bring up reserves, this was entirely
different. It was short, incredibly intense,
and terrifyingly accurate. It lasted just 20
minutes. At 4 .50 a .m., the artillery bombardment
lifts and begins to creep forward. Okay, for
someone who might not be a military historian,
what exactly is a creeping barrage? A creeping
barrage is a highly synchronized complex artillery
tactic. Instead of just firing at the enemy trenches
and then stopping when your men attack, the artillery
fires a continuous curtain of high explosives
that advances or creeps forward at a set pace.
Usually about 50 yards every minute, right? Yes,
roughly. The British and Indian infantry advance
right behind this wall of explosions. It forces
the enemy defenders to stay huddled at the bottom
of their trenches for survival until the exact
second the barrage passes over them, at which
point the attacking infantry is already on the
lip of their trench looking down at them. Because
the Ottomans had no strategic reserves in the
rear to plug any gaps, their defensive line was
like a pane of glass. It was hard on the surface,
but once you crack it, it shatters completely.
The Allied infantry breaks through the 7th and
20th Ottoman divisions almost immediately. The
Ottoman line ceases to exist and through that
gaping hole on the coast, the cavalry pours in.
This is the exact operational bound that Allenby
had been planning for months. The desert mounted
corps doesn't stop to fight the surviving Ottoman
infantry in the trenches. They leave the mopping
up to the foot soldiers. The cavalry rides right
past them, heading north at full speed to get
behind the enemy armies. We have a striking,
highly evocative quote from Lieutenant Colonel
Rex Osborne, who witnessed this massive charge.
He described seeing 94 squadrons disposed in
great breadth and in great depth, hurrying forward
relentlessly on a decisive mission. Can you just
imagine the sheer visceral thunder of 94 squadrons
of horses galloping up the coastline at dawn?
It's an incredible image. And the tragedy for
the Ottoman front line commanders is that they
can't even pick up a telephone to warn the rear
guard that the British cavalry is behind them
because the phone lines are blown up at 1 a .m.
They are completely isolated. And to make matters
worse for the Ottomans, the RAF is ensuring total
continuous paralysis from the air. The air campaign
didn't stop with the bomber strike. Throughout
that entire day of September 19th, pairs of British
SE .5 fighter planes flew in continuous two -hour
relays over the main German airfield at a town
called Jenin. They didn't even need to engage
in romanticized aerial dogfights, they just circled
over the runway with bombs and machine guns.
Whenever they saw any movement on the ground,
a mechanic trying to start an engine, or someone
trying to open a hangar door to get a plane out,
they instantly bombed it or strafed it. They
kept the entire enemy air force pinned to the
ground by force while the cavalry raced up the
coast unchecked. It is terrifying efficiency.
What we are seeing here is a combined arms assault
executed to absolute perfection. You have artillery,
infantry, cavalry, and air power all working
in flawless synchronization. And by the end of
that very first day, the remnants of the Ottoman
Eighth Army are in a completely disorderly panicked
retreat into the hills, being relentlessly strafed
by Australian planes from above. The headquarters
of the Ex -Sec Corps on the coast is completely
overrun. The commander, Shavad Pasha, who just
the day before had told Reset Bey not to retreat,
now literally has to flee for his life. The collapse
is total. The speed of the Allied advance is
staggering, and it leads to the encirclement
phase of the operation. During the early dark
hours of September 20th, the cavalry secures
the crucial narrow passes through the Carmel
Range. They pour through these choke points and
capture the vital communication and transport
centers of Afula and Bison deep in the Ottoman
rear. Another brigade attacks the town of Nazareth,
which was the location of Laman von Sanders'
supreme headquarters. The attack is so sudden
that the overall commander of the Ottoman forces,
Laman von Sanders himself, barely escapes the
town in his pajamas. Fleeing in a car just minutes
before the British cavalry arrives. This is the
operational masterpiece that Allenby envisioned.
He has thrown a massive, unbreakable lasso around
the rear of the Ottoman armies. And now the Ottoman
Seventh Army, which is commanded by Mustafa Kemal,
a man who will later become famous as Atatürk,
the revered founder of modern Turkey, realizes
the horrific reality of his situation. He is
completely outflanked. His railway connection
is cut. The coastal road is gone. He is surrounded.
His only possible escape route is to the east
along a rugged dirt road that leads down into
a steep, narrow gorge called the Wadi Farah heading
toward the Jordan River. On the night of September
20th, with his options exhausted, Kamal orders
his army to evacuate the city of Nablus and begin
a desperate retreat down this gorge. But as soon
as daylight breaks on September 21st, this massive,
slow -moving column is spotted by British reconnaissance
aircraft. And what falls in that gorge is one
of the most horrific, devastating examples of
the destructive power of early air -to -ground
warfare in military history. It becomes known
as the Wadi Farah Massacre. The retreating Ottoman
column, which consists of thousands of men, horses,
heavy artillery guns, and supply wagons, is hopelessly
trapped in this narrow, rocky defile. There is
nowhere to hide. and no room to deploy anti -aircraft
defenses. The RAF and the Australian Flying Corps
begin a relentless systematic bombing campaign.
Waves of aircraft pass over the trapped army
every three minutes without pause. They drop
bombs into the packed column and then swoop down
low to strafe the panicked men and animals with
machine gun fire. The Allied command had actually
planned to keep this aerial operation going for
five hours, rotating squadrons to maintain the
pressure. But the destruction was so absolute
that the Ottoman 7th Army was completely routed
and ceased to exist as a fighting force in just
60 minutes. The aftermath in the Wadi was apocalyptic.
The wreckage of the destroyed column stretched
for six continuous miles along the floor of the
gorge. When the British cavalry finally rode
through the area to secure it, they counted 87
abandoned artillery guns, 55 destroyed motor
lorries, and over 800 four -wheeled wagons smashed
to pieces. T .E. Lawrence summed up the sheer
brutal disproportion of this new era of warfare
perfectly. When reflecting on the destruction
in the Wadi Farah, he wrote, The RAF lost four
killed. The Turks lost a corps. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, this specific moment
in the Wadi Farah marks a profound, undeniable
tactical shift in military history. What you
are witnessing is the bloody death knell of 19th
century warfare, the idea of massive marching
columns moving across open ground, trying to
survive in a 20th century battle space that is
entirely dominated by air power. The Ottomans
had prepared for a static trench like defense.
They had machine guns and dugouts, but they were
entirely unequipped and unadapted for rapid multidimensional
mobile warfare that came at them from the flanks
and from the sky simultaneously. So what does
this all mean for you listening right now? Because
there is a deeply relevant lesson here about
adaptability. The Ottomans built strong trenches.
They amassed heavy machine guns. They felt perfectly
secure in their static defense. But because they
couldn't adapt to an enemy that was moving at
a completely different speed, an enemy that was
attacking their communications networks and literally
raining fire from the sky, their formidable defenses
became nothing more than a death trap. Think
about your own career, your business, or how
your organization operates. If you are relying
on a static defense, relying on the way things
have always been done. While the world and your
competitors are moving at the speed of flight,
you are incredibly vulnerable. The paralysis
induced by speed and surprise during this battle
was absolute. According to the biographer of
Harry Chevelle, the general who commanded the
Desert Mounted Corps, Allenby's operational plan
looked forward in principle and even in specific
detail to the blitzkrieg tactics that would tear
across Europe in 1939. sheer surprise and relentless
speed completely unraveled a massive entrenched
army in a matter of days. And once that solid
center falls, the dominoes start crashing down
everywhere. While the 7th and 8th armies are
being annihilated on the coast and in the wadis,
we have to look back east, across the Jordan
River. Remember Chader's force. The Anzacs, the
West Indies Regiment, and the Jewish volunteers
who spent all that time dragging harrows and
faking the big attack earlier in the week. Now
it was their turn to strike for real. With the
western front collapsed, Chader's force moves
out. On September 22nd, they capture the critical
Jizzer -Ed -Damiya bridge over the Jordan River.
Then they push forward aggressively, capturing
the town of Es -Salt. And finally, on September
25th, they capture the major city of Amman. The
Ottoman 4th Army, which had been guarding this
eastern sector, was completely unaware of the
absolute destruction of their sister armies on
the coast. Remember, communications were severed.
They only realized the war was lost when shattered
refugees and fleeing soldiers started pouring
into their lines from the west. Once the commanders
of the fourth army realized they were the last
ones left standing, they began a panicked, disorganized
retreat north towards Dara. And just like the
forces in the Wadi Farah, they are harassed endlessly
by air attacks from above and ambushed relentlessly
by Arab irregulars from the dunes. And this colloqued
creates a fascinating, highly complex and very
dark psychological situation on the ground. The
Ottoman garrison that had been stationed far
down south in Maran is desperately trying to
retreat north to join the rest of the survivors.
They find their path entirely blocked at a place
called Ziza by the Anzac mounted division. But
the British Empire forces aren't the only ones
hunting them. They are also being closely pursued
by the local Arab forces. And the Ottoman soldiers
know exactly what they have done during their
years of occupying those lands. They know the
harsh realities of their rule and the atrocities
they've committed against the local Arab villages.
So they face a horrific choice. Rather than face
the wrath and vengeance of the local tribesmen
they had oppressed for so long, the entire Ottoman
garrison at Ziza makes a remarkable decision.
They choose to surrender intact to the Australians
and New Zealanders. They essentially beg the
Anzacs to take them prisoner and protect them,
just to avoid being slaughtered by the Arab forces
closing in behind them. It is a stark, tragic
illustration of the deep hatreds and blood deaths
sown by military occupation. And those deaths
were collected as the campaign neared its end.
As the allied cavalry and the Arab forces relentlessly
pursue the remaining fleeing Ottomans toward
the city of Damascus, the retreating Turks in
their desperation and anger commit terrible atrocities
against hostile Arab villages along the route.
In immediate retaliation, the Arab forces declare
a policy of taking no prisoners. At a village
called Tafas, after discovering a massacre committed
by the fleeing Turks, the enraged Arab forces
wipe out nearly 5 ,000 Ottoman soldiers. Jamal
Pasha, a high -ranking Ottoman commander, only
narrowly escapes with his life. The pursuit from
the battlefield all the way to Damascus is brutal,
chaotic, and lightning fast. By September 30th,
the Australian cavalry units are intercepting
the Damascus garrison as they try to flee through
the Barata Gorge. On October 1st, the historic
city of Damascus officially falls to the Allies.
They take 20 ,000 Ottoman prisoners in the city
alone. And amidst all this chaos, there is a
logistical detail that I find genuinely miraculous.
The Allied command actually manages to feed those
20 ,000 prisoners and all of the thousands of
cavalry horses without depriving the local inhabitants
of Damascus of their essential food supplies.
Given the state of the supply lines at the end
of such a long, rapid and destructive advance,
it's an incredible feat of supply management
and humanitarian restraint. But looking at the
military outcome, the scale of the victory is
almost hard to overstate. The entire campaign,
from the moment that first creeping barrage opened
up at Megiddo to the triumphant fall of Damascus,
results in the surrender of 75 ,000 Ottoman soldiers.
75 ,000 combat troops. That is not just a tactical
defeat. That is the total evaporation of an empire's
military capability in the Middle East. It's
a collapse so absolute, so swift that it almost
defies belief, especially when you compare it
to the bloody inch -by -inch grinding slaughters
that were still happening over on the Western
Front at the exact same time. The historian Edward
Erickson contextualized the psychological impact
of this defeat brilliantly. He compared the Battle
of Megiddo to what the Germans famously called
the Black Days of the German Army on the Western
Front. Erickson noted that the sheer scale and
speed of the disaster at Megiddo proved to the
Turkish general staff and to all but the most
fanatically diehard nationalists in the government
that the war was entirely irrevocably lost. Their
armies were gone. The empire was defenseless.
And sure enough, the political reality caught
up to the military reality. By October 31st,
hostilities officially ceased with the signing
of the armistice of Mudros. The Ottoman Empire's
war is over. So we have covered the geography,
the deception, the artillery, the air power,
and the collapse. What General Edmund Allenby
achieved at the Battle of Megiddo was nothing
short of breathtaking. He completely rewrote
the rulebook of modern war. He broke the seemingly
unbreakable stalemate of World War I trench warfare,
and he didn't do it just with brute bloody force.
He did it with a brilliantly orchestrated symphony
of creeping barrages, rapid mobile cavalry exploiting
the gaps, and an entirely unmatched use of overwhelming
air power. He achieved decisive, world -changing
results at a comparatively incredibly low human
cost for the Allied forces. He proved fundamentally
that a rigid, static defense is easily shattered
if the attacking force can dictate the terms
of engagement and the speed of the battle. By
completely blinding Lehman von Sanders with an
elaborate web of deception and total air superiority,
and by immediately decapitating the Ottoman communications
network with that single perfectly placed bomber
strike, Allenby ensured that the battle was effectively
won before the very first infantrymen even charged
out of their trenches. Which leaves us with a
final provocative thought for you to mull over
as you go about your day. We've talked about
adaptability, but let's talk about the illusion
of security. The Ottoman commanders felt perfectly
secure behind their heavily armed machine gun
laden trenches in the Judean hills. They looked
at their defenses and thought they were impregnable.
But Allenby proved a timeless truth. If an enemy
or a competitor or a disruption in your industry
can cut your communications, blind your vision
and move at a speed far faster than your ability
to react, your formidable defenses don't protect
you at all. They just become your tomb. You are
trapped by the very walls you built to keep yourself
safe. It is a profound historical lesson that
applies far beyond the battlefield. You have
to actively ask yourself in your own life, in
your career trajectory or in your overarching
business strategy, are you relying on a static
defense? Are you pouring all your energy into
building depot trenches and thicker walls in
a world that is fundamentally moving at the speed
of flight? Because if you are relying on the
old rules to protect you, the next Megiddo might
be waiting just over the horizon. Thank you so
much for taking this deep dive with us today.
It has been an incredible journey from the blinding
dust of the Jordan Valley to the thundering skies
over the Plain of Armageddon. Keep questioning
your assumptions, keep adapting to the speed
of the world around you, and we will see you
on the next deep dive.