Virtuous Praetorians: Military Culture and the Defense Press in Germany and Turkey, 1929-1939

The aim of this dissertation is to take a comparative and transnational approach to the formation of the military officer mentality and worldviews in interwar Europe by taking Germany and Turkey as case studies. It focuses on the years roughly from the Great Depression to the outbreak of the Second World War. The characteristics of military culture are examined through the publications of the defense press.

Germany and Turkey were allies in the First World War and shared a similar fate as losers of that war. Both went through rapid territorial and political change; both positioned themselves as the opposite of the winning powers, Britain and France. Yet they had different attitudes toward the international system that was formed following the war: Germany was a revisionist power, whereas Turkey was an example of interwar countries that rejected irredentism. While they had different political systems (Weimar Republic until 1933, followed by Nazi dictatorship in Germany; single-party state until 1946 in Turkey), the impact of total war and the technological and socioeconomic changes of the post-1918 era engendered similar responses in the officer corps of these countries toward politics, international relations, and technological development. These responses led to three major themes: fear of defenselessness in the age of total war; the role of the military in nation-building; and the urge to discover and fight the internal enemies of the nation.

A picture of self-conscious uncertainty emerged in the interwar military press, which betrayed signs of old institutions trying to adapt to a new world and fighting hard not to accept the changes. The German and Turkish officer cadres of the interwar era made the transition to the tactics and strategy of total war in the twentieth century, but most of their views on parliaments, democracy, and republicanism remained hostile and anchored in a previous era. These attitudes have influenced civil-military relations in both countries and had further implications for the future development of democratization.