On the brink of World War I, Germany was often depicted by Allied propagandists as an evil puppet master manipulating the Ottoman Empire. Behind closed doors, however, the Ottomans worked hard to exploit their alliance with Germany as a means of reviving the empire's former strength and glory. Ultimately, these cross purposes brought disaster, pulling a fatally weak and woefully unprepared Ottoman state into a global war, and unleashing vicious, internal, ethnic repression that brought it defeat and dismemberment. The diaries and official reports of German spy and propagandist Curt...