With the railway from Berlin to Baghdad, this slogan stirred emotions in Europe a century ago. The Baghdad Railway was much more than just a major technical project in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the century. Bold engineering feats were intertwined with great power politics; ambitions for power and commercial interests were inextricably linked. Against the backdrop of diplomatic intrigues and the struggle of European powers for dominance in the Middle East, the Baghdad Railway was a political issue of the highest order. Wilhelmine Germany supported the construction as a national prestige project. For the Ottoman Empire, however, the railway was primarily a guarantee of progress and development. Based on previously unpublished documents from the Ottoman archives, the author paints a fascinating picture of railway policy in the late Ottoman Empire.