The Kaiser's Mission to Kabul.

• Author: Handley, John C.
• Position: Book review

The Kaiser's Mission to Kabul: A Secret Expedition to Afghanistan in World War I by Jules Stewart, London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2014, ISBN: 978-178076-8755, 288 pp., $ 30.66 Amazon Hardcover.

The London-based author Jules Stewart also works as a journalist and an historian. Except for Madrid; The History and Albert: A Life, his historical emphasis remains largely on British activity in Afghanistan and India. His other published books include: On Afghanistan's Plans: The Story of Britain's Afghan Wars; Crimson Snow: Britain's First Disaster in Afghanistan; The Savage Border: The Story of the Northwest Frontier; Spying for the Raj; The Pundits and the Mapping of the Himalaya; and The Khyber Rifles: From the British Raj to Al-Qaeda.

Readers interested in military, diplomacy, political intrigue, East Asian, Indian or British history will be familiar with the phrase "the great game"--a 19th century contest between Britain and Russia to establish influence, preferably domination, over those lesser kingdoms and countries that bordered British India. At the turn of the 20th century, "the great game" began again only now Britain and Germany contested in this struggle for domination. Although Rudyard Kipling's Kim, harkens back to the Russo-British machinations, the 20th century great game, The Kaiser's Mission to Kabul, brings a fictional Kim to historical and factual life. It is an adventure story from beginning to end filled with numerous examples of German and Afghan exploits, although the Brits and the Turks certainly come off as important players, if not actually irritating and even untrustworthy. The book addresses the German mission from Berlin to Kabul to woo Afghanistan from British patronage, the negotiations, and the mission's eventual failure, which many readers might predict after learning of the divided command of the two mission leaders--Captain Oskar von Niedermayer answering to the General Army Staff and Lieutenant Colonel Werner von Hentig answering to the Foreign Office.

This account provides in-depth details of Berlin's joint military and diplomatic planning for the mission to Kabul, to include the actual travel from Berlin in separate parties by the two main protagonists, the horrendous problems encountered getting across Persia to Kabul, their reception in Kabul at the court of Amir Hibibullah when finally arriving after nearly a year of travel, and their eventual escape from Kabul along vastly different routes. The author...