The Gallipoli Campaign 1915-1916
The Allied endeavor to secure the Dardanelles and capture Constantinople resulted in huge casualty counts and the ultimate withdrawal from the Gallipoli peninsula.
Throughout 1915, British and French efforts to remove Turkey from World War I were centered on the Gallipoli campaign. Strong Turkish defenses guarded the Dardanelles approaches to Constantinople. Conceived in part by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, the endeavor would ultimately fail, representing, according to one historian, a “useless, futile waste.” Opinions differ on the soundness of the operation, yet the end result was an appalling loss of life.
Gallipoli as Grand Strategy or Grand Folly
The Gallipoli campaign was designed to remove Turkey from the war and open a southern line of supply to a beleaguered Russia. Unfettered access to the Dardanelles meant the possibility of a swift victory at Constantinople, the effect of which would have been the fall of the Turkish government. The Turks, however, under the command of Mustafa Kemel, forced a campaign of attrition, resulting in British evacuation by January 1916.
Philip Haythornthwaite, historian and author of forty books on military history, assesses Gallipoli as, “the one strategic idea of the war; yet it was also one of the most ill-managed in history.” (23) The naval campaign began in February 1915 under Admiral John de Robeck. Relentless bombarding of Turkish shore defenses failed to produce victory. Additionally, Turkish mines successfully disabled several British and French warships. De Robeck ended the naval campaign at the very moment the Turks were considering withdrawing, but the British did not know this at the time.
The interim period between the end of the naval campaign and the start of the land assault creating several bridgeheads enabled the Turks to strengthen their defenses. Allied troops consisted of British regular units, a small French contingent, and ANZAC units, the most famous of which was the Australian Light Horse. Under the overall command of Sir Ian Hamilton, the largely summer landing operation was poorly coordinated. Allied troops, for the most part, were held to their trenches and had difficulty breaking out of the initial beachhead. Even a second landing of British forces at Suvla Bay, north of the ANZAC bridgehead on August 6-7 failed to break the stalemate.
Exposing the Gallipoli Debacle and Evacuation
Sir Ian Hamilton continued to downplay the enormity of the disaster until several war correspondents managed to bypass military censors and present a true picture of the on-going carnage. Keith Murdoch (father of Rupert Murdoch) visited Gallipoli and, with the assistance of other correspondents who had been there longer, delivered to London and the British political and military leaders an account of the mismanaged campaign. Hamilton was recalled, replaced by Sir Charles Monro, whose task, ultimately, was to evacuate the troops from the peninsula. Ironically, this was the only part of the campaign to succeed brilliantly.
Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson assesses Gallipoli differently. In his estimation, a British victory at Gallipoli would have only benefited Russia and allowed that nation to “come a step closer to realizing her long-cherished aim of controlling Constantinople.” (291) Ferguson also argues that Britain should have used troops spent on the various ancillary campaigns on the Western Front and that these other deployments – Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, were more concerned with post-war Imperial strategy.
The Gallipoli failure cost Winston Churchill his position in the government. As to the Anzacs, the anniversary of the first landing at the Dardanelles became “ANZAC Day,” the national day celebrated by Australians in commemoration of the many young lives lost at Gallipoli.
Sources:
Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (Basic Books, 1999).
Philip J. Haythornthwaite, The World War One Source Book (London: Brockhampton Press, 1994).
Phillip Knightly, The First Casualty (Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1975).
 | Picture credit: Michael Streich when he visited the battle site. |
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