Comparative Quantitative Analysis of the Great Offensive and the Battle of Nablus

Abstract

The Great Offensive was a successful war of destruction that resulted in the Turkish troops besieging and destroying some of the Greek troops on August 26, 1922. In the success of this war of destruction; Reasons such as the infiltration of the cavalry, the secret shift of the army to the south of Afyonkarahisar, the effective firing of the artillery units can be said. The Battle of Nablus was a successful battle of extermination that resulted in the British army's encirclement and annihilation of Ottoman troops on 19 September 1918 and their drive north. The secret of the success here can be explained by the backward infiltration of the cavalry units, the high numerical superiority and the high number of aircraft attacks. These two attacks are also the early applications of the blitzkrieg tactics used by the Germans in the Second World War. The aim of this study is to compare the Great Offensive and the Nablus Operation with quantitative data. For this, the numbers, classes, locations and geographical slopes of the military units in both battles were determined and new criteria were established for the battles of destruction by establishing connections between them. As a result, it has been determined that the Great Offensive and the Battle of Nablus are very similar to each other strategically, but there are serious differences between the degrees of difficulty. It was determined that the Turkish army took a great risk in the Great Offensive, the geographical conditions were unfavorable in the place where the main attack was made, and there was no numerical advantage. In the Battle of Nablus, on the other hand, it was determined that the risk was low, the superiority of numbers was felt in all areas and the attack was made from a flat land.