Shadowing Practice: WW1's Forgotten Middle Eastern Theater - Learn English Speaking with Video
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On the moonless night of October 29th,
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1914, two Ottoman cruisers sneak into the harbor of Odessa.
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Once in position, the crew loads a torpedo and launches it at an unexpected gunboat.
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For half an hour, they wreak havoc on the port.
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While not all in Constantinople are pleased, the Black Sea Raid makes Turkish entry into the war inevitable.
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Two weeks later, the Sultan of the Empire declares a Jihad
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or Holy War against the Entente powers of the First World War.
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Ottoman participation in the Great War had been a long time coming.
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Two months before shelling Russian ports, the Empire formally allied with Germany, shielded German ships from the Entente,
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and even closed the Turkish Straits to British shipping.
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The Middle Eastern theater would see vicious fighting in treacherous conditions, with its legacy shaping the modern Middle East.
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After entering the war, Ottoman attention immediately shifted to their mountainous border with the Russian Empire.
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Here, they hoped to recover lost territory while also relieving pressure off their allies in Poland.
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Enver Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of War,
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engaged the Russian army near Serekemysh in eastern Anatolia at a high altitude of 6,000 feet or 1,800 meters.
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The result was devastating.
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The Russian counterattack encircled the Ottoman Third Army,
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leaving only a fraction of Ottoman forces to make it back to their headquarters at Erzurum.
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The Battle of Serechimish was indicative of the entire Middle Eastern theater.
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The armies were comparatively small, but environmental and logistical problems wreaked havoc on the armies.
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In the Caucasus Mountains, frostbite and typhus claimed as many lives as combat.
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The strain of supporting fighting in remote areas drained the local population of resources, leading to widespread famine and disease.
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Additionally, Enver Pasha in particular blamed his chaotic defeat on the disloyalty of the area's ethnic minority,
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in this case, the Armenians.
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The war in the Caucasus represented an existential fight for the Ottomans.
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It was here that the Empire directed most of its attention and resources.
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Meanwhile, the Mesopotamian Front initially began as a small frontier-style operation when British Indian troops seized control of Basra,
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an important trade hub.
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Buoyed by this success, Britain pushed further into Mesopotamia.
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In Egypt, it was the Ottoman army which took the initiative.
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Led by Cemal Pasha and the German general Friedrich Kress von Kreschenstein,
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an army crossed the Sinai Peninsula in January 1915 to disrupt the Suez Canal and sever Britain's trade with its colonial subjects.
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Although the raid was beaten back by Indian defenders, the Ottomans continued to threaten the canal.
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Aside from the main fronts, the war spilled over into neutral nations.
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Iran, notably, never fought in the war, but the war was certainly fought in it.
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Russian and British forces brawled with Ottoman and German ones, as both sought to undermine the enemy's local influence.
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German agents, notably Wilhelm Vassmos, organized and led revolts against Britain.
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The fighting in Iran devastated the country and left 2 million civilians dead.
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The Ottoman Empire got itself into a three-front war.
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However, none of these fronts seemed to directly threaten the Empire's heartland, which was thousands of miles away from Constantinople.
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That changed on April 25th, 1915, as the Entente thrust a dagger right into the Turkish Straits.
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Britain's first Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, devised an audacious plan to force a passage through the Dardanelles Strait,
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coerce the Ottomans to sue for peace, and reopen a supply route to Russia.
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An initial naval attack in March failed miserably,
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and by April, the plan morphed into an amphibious assault to clear the Ottoman defenses in the area.
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The Turks were prepared.
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Under supervision of the German General Otto Lehmann von Sanders, an ingenious defense-in-depth system turned the peninsula into an impregnable fortress.
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Without the element of surprise, the landings at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles became a bloodbath.
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Of the first 200 soldiers to come ashore, only 21 did so alive.
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Nevertheless, the continuous wave of soldiers seemed on the verge of taking the critical high ground, until the local commander there,
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Mustafa Kemal, led a successful counterattack with the cry, I don't expect you to attack, I order you to die.
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The Entente would launch another major offensive in August, synchronizing breakouts at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles,
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with a new landing at Soukla Bay.
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Once more, the battles devolved into a bloody stalemate.
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By November, Allied planners accepted that the situation was untenable,
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and the entrance of Bulgaria in the war allowed Germany to transfer heavy artillery to the front, which devastated the entrenched Entente soldiers.
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Over the course of the next two months, France and Britain methodically withdrew from Gallipoli.
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A day before the Entente came ashore, hundreds of Armenian leaders were rounded up and deported to holding centers,
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where many would die.
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Under orders of Talat Pasha, the Minister of the Interior,
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the Ottoman state carried out a systematic genocide against the Empire's Armenian population.
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Decades of ethnic tension between the Ottoman state and the Armenian community preceded the genocide.
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The assertion of a more Islamic and Turkish identity within the Empire sparked attacks on religious minorities.
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After the radical young Turks came to power, a narrow ethnocentric nationalism developed.
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By the time the war with Russia broke out, Armenians had become an internal enemy,
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the result of a projected image fueled by fear, jealousy, and vengeance.
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Other Christian and minority groups also faced persecution under the young Turk triumvirate.
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The Armenians became the scapegoat for the Ottoman military failures in the Caucasus.
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From February 1915 onward, Armenian men in the Ottoman army were disarmed and pressed into labor battalions,
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where they were worked to death or executed.
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In the Van province, the ruthless and sadistic governor, Javdet Bey, unleashed a campaign of terror on the local populace.
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In response, Armenians took up arms.
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For months, they were besieged in the city of Ban until Russian General Nikolai Yudinich relieved the city.
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The genocide left 500,000 to 1 million dead, with another 200,000 forcibly converted to Islam.
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Throughout the remainder of 1915 and 1916, Russian and Ottoman forces brawled in the Caucasus theater.
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The fighting was brutal.
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Three quarters of all Ottoman casualties between 1915 and 1917 were sustained in the Caucasus.
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Nonetheless, the Russians dominated the fighting in this theater.
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By the spring of 1917, Russia had seized the vast majority of northeastern Anatolia,
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including the major cities of Erzurum, Erzinken and Trabzon.
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After the campaign at Gallipoli, Britain continued to engage in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian theatres.
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In the latter, the army advanced quickly throughout 1915.
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A year after taking Basra, Britain had taken large swaths of land, until ultimately reaching the strategic city of Qut.
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As the British advanced, their supply lines became ever more strained.
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Despite this, the advance continued.
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saw Cut as a strategic necessity to secure the South.
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General Charles Townsend ultimately did reach the city, albeit with an exhausted and undersupplied force.
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On November 22nd, 1915, a weary British army faced a force twice its size at the Battle of Tichefon.
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The fighting was inconclusive, but due to heavy casualties, Townsend had to retreat to Cut and await reinforcements.
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While he held his position, the Ottomans settled in for a siege.
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For five months, the army's supplies dwindled, as the British launched three frantic, poorly organized relief efforts.
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Ultimately, Townsend surrendered.
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The Siege of Cut was a humiliating defeat for Britain.
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The battle triggered a widespread reorganization of operational, administrative, and logistical responsibility, which halted the front for nearly a year.
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While the front stalled in Mesopotamia, Britain's diplomatic overtures in Arabia finally bore fruit.
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After years of exchanging letters with the British High Commissioner in Egypt,
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Sharif Hussein bin Ali of Mecca agreed to rise up against Constantinople.
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Hussein's ambitions matched Britain's interests, despite Britain's support for rivals and several other conflicting promises.
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On June 10th, 1916, Hussein personally marked the start of the Arab Revolt with the shot of a rifle.
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The revolters quickly seized Mecca and the port of Jeddah.
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From October onward, the Sharif and his sons were joined by a British army officer called T.E.
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Lawrence, who led several famous raids on the Hejaz Railway and disrupted Ottoman supply in the region.
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Although the Arab revolt had a major political legacy, its military significance was fairly small.
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The Arabs generally faced weak enemy resistance and failed to incite Arabs outside the Hejaz region to join them.
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In 1917, Britain renewed its efforts to break through the Ottoman defensive lines in the Empire's southern reaches.
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In Egypt, Britain dislodged the Ottomans from the Sinai Peninsula and prepared for a push into southern Palestine.
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Simultaneously, months of reorganization were put to the test in Mesopotamia, where another advance sought to finally capture Baghdad.
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Palestine's steady water supply and fertile grasslands made it an attractive base for the British Army.
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However, the offensive started off poorly.
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In the spring of 1917, two attempts to breach the defensive lines in Gaza had failed.
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But while the front stagnated, progress was made elsewhere.
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In June, Arab forces took the strategic port city of Aqaba.
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The defenses here were designed to protect against an attack by sea, rather than land.
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Although the attack still owed much to supporting bombardments by British Royal Navy vessels.
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At the same time, the Mesopotamian front advanced rapidly.
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Under the command of General Stanley Maude, Britain methodically advanced against their outmatched and increasingly drained Ottoman adversary.
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Only two months after taking to the offensive,
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Maude triumphantly entered Baghdad, to whose people he proclaimed that his army did not come as a conqueror but as a liberator.
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Half a year later, Britain was on the move in Palestine as well.
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General Edmund Allenby had strengthened their logistical situation while the Ottoman forces were hampered by desertion,
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shortages, and a strategic focus on other theatres.
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A third battle of Gaza finally broke the stalemate.
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notably thanks to overwhelming artillery support, Mark IV tanks, and nearly 10,000 chemical shells.
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Following the breakthrough, the British pursued the Ottomans north.
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In December, Allenby victoriously entered Jerusalem.
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Church bells across Britain rang, and a cartoon boldly proclaimed the victory as the Last Crusade.
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1918 marked a turning point in the Middle Eastern theater, While famines, disease, and ethnic violence ravaged the land,
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the Ottoman Empire stumbled on, barely hanging together.
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But before their own collapse, the crumbling of their mortal Russian foe sparked an ill-afforded offensive,
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fueled by the maniacal dreams of Pan-Turkism.
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The Russian Revolution of 1917 had thrown the empire into disarray.
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After the Bolsheviks took over, Russia devolved into a patchwork of independence movements and rivaling governments with disputed legal status.
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The Caucasus was in a particular state of chaos.
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With the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Ottomans recovered some of the land they had lost to Russia in the 19th century.
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But many in Constantinople wanted more.
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Throughout 1918, Ottoman armies would fight their way through the Caucasus, trying to unite all Turks, even those of Central Asia, into one state.
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While the Ottomans tried to profit off the collapse of Russia, their own collapse would not take much longer.
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After another stalemate in Palestine, British forces smashed through the Ottoman lines at the Battle of Megiddo on September 19, 1918.
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Large numbers of aircraft and mechanized transport cut off the Ottoman retreat.
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The battle turned into a rout.
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A month later, the Entente pushed as far north as Aleppo.
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Despite this route, victory over the Ottomans would not be won in the Middle East.
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Instead, a decisive Entente breakthrough at the Salonika Front did more
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to convince Constantinople of the hopeless situation than the advances in faraway Palestine or Mesopotamia.
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As a crumbling Bulgaria sued for peace and the German armies were in full retreat, the capital laid exposed.
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Finally, the Armistice of Mudrose brought the Middle Eastern Theater in the First World War to an end.
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In the end, the Middle Eastern Theater played a fairly small role in the course of the war.
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However, the local consequences were enormous.
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Particularly due to famine and disease, over 7 million people lost their lives.
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As the Ottoman Empire crumbled, conflicting promises and desires transformed the region into the modern Middle East.
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In Arabia, Anatolia, and the Caucasus, years of ethnic violence, imperial machinations,
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and civil war would decide the region's future.
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Don't forget to check out the uncensored version of this episode
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over on armchairhistory.tv using code WORLDWAR1 for 100% off of your first month.
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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección
Este vídeo tiene 168 frases y 2299 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 17:38. El hablante mantiene un ritmo constante de unas 130 palabras por minuto, cómodo para el shadowing. Solo el 71 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés, por lo que el vocabulario es exigente.
Vocabulario clave de este vídeo
15 palabras del vídeo que vale la pena aprender, con su pronunciación y significado:
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| theater sustantivo | /ˈθi(ə)tɚ/ | teatro |
| offensive adjetivo | /ˈɔˌfɛnsɪv/ | ofensivo, ofensiva |
| strategic adjetivo | /stɹəˈti.dʒɪk/ | estratégico |
| ethnic adjetivo | /ˈɛθ.nɪk/ | étnico |
| minority sustantivo | /maɪˈnɒɹ.ɪ.ti/ | minoría |
| raid sustantivo | /ɹeɪd/ | correría, razia |
| collapse verbo | /kəˈlæps/ | derrumbarse, desplomarse |
| retreat sustantivo | /ɹɪˈtɹiːt/ | retirada, repliegue |
| ally sustantivo | /ˈæl.aɪ/ | aliado, aliada |
| peninsula sustantivo | /pəˈnɪn.sə.lə/ | península, procurrente |
| notably adverbio | notablemente | |
| genocide sustantivo | /ˈd͡ʒɛnəsaɪd/ | genocidio |
| seize verbo | /ˈsiːz/ | agarrar, apoderarse de |
| discover verbo | /dɪˈskʌvə/ | descubrir |
| defensive adjetivo | /dɪˈfɛn.sɪv/ | defensivo, que defensa |
Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| pay off verbo | valer la pena, salir a cuenta | |
| break out verbo | escapar forzadamente, fugarse | |
| carry out verbo | /ˈkæ.ɹi aʊt/ | llevar a cabo, llevar al cabo |
| check out verbo | investigar, chequear | |
| take over verbo | apoderarse, enseñorearse |
Pronunciación a tener en cuenta
El hablante usa 5 contracciones y formas reducidas, como don't, you're. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.
- Los sonidos de “th”: theater /ˈθi(ə)tɚ/, ethnic /ˈɛθ.nɪk/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/, breakthrough /ˈbɹeɪk.θɹuː/, nevertheless /ˌnɛvɚðəˈlɛs/
- Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: casualty /ˈkæʒu.əlti/, ashore /əˈʃɔɹ/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, shell /ʃɛl/, initiative /ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/
- Palabras largas — cuida el acento: minority /maɪˈnɒɹ.ɪ.ti/, peninsula /pəˈnɪn.sə.lə/, artillery /ɑɹˈtɪləɹi/, historian /hɪˈstɔɹi.ən/, devastated /ˈdɛv.əˌsteɪ.təd/
Cómo practicar con este vídeo
- Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
- Haz shadowing frase por frase a velocidad normal, repitiendo cada una hasta que tu ritmo coincida con el del hablante.
- Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como theater, offensive, strategic.
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.