General Otto Liman von Sanders
Otto Liman von Sanders commanded the Ottoman defence of Gallipoli. Born in Prussia in 1855 to a family of Jewish descent that had converted to Christianity, he served in the cavalry and on the general staff and reached the rank of lieutenant general. In late 1913 he was sent to Constantinople to head the German military mission reorganising the Ottoman army after its defeats in the Balkan wars. His appointment to command the garrison of the capital itself provoked a diplomatic crisis with Russia, and the post was altered to inspector general. When the Allies landed on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915 he had been in command of the Fifth Army for about three weeks. His decision was to hold the beaches thinly and keep the bulk of his six divisions back as mobile reserves, on the reasoning that he could not know where the landings would come and that counter-attack mattered more than a continuous defensive line. It worked: the landings were contained within a few kilometres of the shore, and the Ottoman divisions arrived where they were needed. The subordinate commander at Chunuk Bair was Mustafa Kemal, whose judgement at the critical moment Liman von Sanders backed and later credited. The campaign cost the Allies some 250,000 casualties and ended in evacuation in January 1916. He later commanded in Palestine, where Allenby destroyed his armies at Megiddo in 1918. He was held for six months over the Armenian deportations and released without trial. He died in 1929.
- Lived: 1855 CE – 1929 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: general
