Ernst Jäckh played an active role in German diplomatic efforts during the First World War, although was never officially part of the German Foreign Office. During the war, Jaeckh was engaged in putting out propaganda in favor of the German-Turkish alliance (and trying to instigate actions that would undercut the British in the Middle East), with historian Fritz Fischer characterizing him as "the most important propagandist of Germany's eastern policy." Historian Margaret Lavinia Anderson describes Jäckh as "a diminutive journalist with a supersized gift for self-promotion" who marketed the Ottoman Empire as "the land of tolerance" while Ottoman Armenians were being systematically murdered.