Fighting the French in Morocco" by Albert Bartels is one of the more obscure books on WWI in North Africa and the Middle East. T.E. Lawrence is, thanks to Lowell Thomas, the almost legendary, mystical leader of the Arab Revolt. Bartels attempted the same thing in Morocco. Below is a review of the book, which I found in London in a bookshop near the British Museum that specialized in books on the Middle East, a shop I returned to several times over the years.

Illustrated with photographs by the author. Translated from the German orignal.

T.E, Lawrence was not the only European to lead an Arab uprising against his WWI enemies. Unlike TEL, Albert Bartels was not a soldier or a member of any military unit.He arrived in Morocco in 1903 as a young employee of a German trading company. He quickly learned Arabic and with it the cultures and differences of the 66 tribes/clans of Morocco.
With more enlightened support from Berlin, Bartels may well have succeeded in making Morocco into a German colony, and certainly would have drawn a substantial number of French troops from the bloody trenches to the Atlas and Rif mountains.
With the coming of WWI, the French seized all German interests in Morocco and imprisoned all German nationals in Oran. Bartels, with three other prisoners, escaped into the Spanish zone, making his way to the German Consulate in Melilla, where he was promised arms and financial support for his planned fight against the French by the German Government.
The promises were never kept. Further, the German government forced Bartels to work with Abd-el-Malek, who proved to be a treacherous ally who attempted to kill Bartels on one occasion with poisoned butter. Bartels was threatened with court martial by the German government if he abandoned Malek. With no financial support from Berlin, Batels bought cartridges for his Riff fighters with his own money, then by signing notes. Like fighting a war using your MasterCharge.
In the end, Bartels was never captured by the French, but was ordered to cease operations by the German government as part of the Armistice Agreement.

Pictured in native dress, Bartels is ruggedly handsome, bearded, the exotic hero of some exotic movie. With every right to be intensely bitter, his book refuses to take on that tone. He writes in a simple unadorned and direct style, and is remarkably modest.
His courage and resourcefulness in combat is recorded in only one obscure book. His pubic impact, however, can be measured by the fact that P.C. Wren in his 1926 sequel to Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur, Albert Bartels is the enemy of the Legion approaching on the horizon to threaten French glory in Morocco. Wren had no need to explain to his readers of the time who Albert Bartels was.

In case you are stopped on the street and offered money for the answer to the question: How many American and British French Foreign Legion movies have been made, including re-makes -- the answer is 73.

I have the Legion in a novel in-progress, "A Song of the Desert", set in 1989 in San Francisco. Consequently, I have picked up my previous study of the Legion to freshen my memory, so will be reviewing some books on the Legion as well as on the French Resistance during WWII, which was not what the movies have portrayed. As DeGaulle said, "The Resistance, it was just a bluff that came off."