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The 19th century had made a great deal about the crusading tradition. and you'll see it in certain of the propaganda posters, that a ghostly figure of crusader looms in the sky behind british soldiers in the judean hills. >> so the fall of jerusalem is playing really well in western capitals because, you know, this is -- finally after 700 years, the crusades have won. >> and the british media tried also to present it as such. so as allenby was advancing to jerusalem and he took the city, there were constant daily reports in british media comparing him to richard the lionheart. >> but the legac...

>> for the jews, jerusalem is where solomon built the holy temple. >> for christians, this is the place where jesus was crucified. >> for muslims, jerusalem is where the prophet muhammed made the night journey. >> people who are said to have conquered the world have swept through this city. >> no other individual changed the landscape in the way that herod the great did. >> saladin was determined to take on the christians and throw them out of jerusalem. >> at a time of ottoman/islamic rule, the british badly wanted to control the holy land. >> the main case of the arabs is against the british...

725 years after passed since the end of the third crusade. by 1914, the world has undergone a drastic transformation. fueled by the rise of technology and industrialization. but world war i now threatens the entire globe, and jerusalem lies directly in its path. >> the time of the outbreak of the first world war, jerusalem was still occupied by the ottomans, also called the turks, who had been there for hundreds of years. >> the ottoman empire was controlling most of the what we call today the middle east. it had lost egypt because egypt had become part of the british empire. but they had turk...

Peninsula, lebanon, and syria. >> in world war i, the turks ended up siding with germany and austria/hungary. so they became really the third part of the axis at that time. >> allied with the germans, the turks send a strong military leader to protect the middle east. >> jamelle pshaw was sent by the ottomans to become the governor general of jerusalem, thinking that this would be an important battleground and that they needed a military man to be in charge. >> jamal pasha served a major part in the armenian genocide. he's known to be somebody with very little mercy and does not look favorably...

Became a political refugee. >> and djemal pasha was ultimately killed by an armenian because he had a hand in the armenian genocide. >> with command of the holy city now directly in their hands, the germans turn their attention to destroying the british. >> the germans are going to make sure that for every inch of ground the british advance, they are going to bleed. and as the british advance towards jerusalem, the desert theater becomes a brutal, brutal place for battle. the combat is fierce. it's ugly. this is desert combat at its very worst. >> but for all his success, general allenby will ...