Why did the Gallipoli campaign fail

Detailed map of the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915 showing British and Allied landing beaches. (The War Illustrated Album deLuxe published in London 1916 / Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

When the First World War broke out in July 1914 the general feeling was that it would be over by the end of that year. However, as 1914 turned into 1915 it was clear this wasn’t the case. On the Western Front in particular, the fighting had ground to a stalemate, and the casualties continued to rise. The politicians and the military commanders in Britain began to look for other ways to attack Germany and to alleviate the pressure on the Eastern Front. The Russian government had also formally requested a ‘show of strength’ against Turkey, one of Germany’s allies. As First Lord of the Admiralty, the government minister responsible for the British navy, Winston Churchill supported the idea of an attack on Turkey. The plan was to attack Gallipoli, a peninsula in the strategically important area of the Dardanelles near the Turkish capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul) and then move inland to capture the capital. It was hoped that once Turkey had been knocked out of the war, the Allies would have access to Russia’s Black Sea ports, creating a line of communication to Russia and access to Russian wheat necessary for the war effort. The campaign is either referred to as the Gallipoli Campaign or the Dardanelles Campaign.

The Gallipoli campaign began with the Allied bombardment of Turkish defences on 19 January 1915, followed a few months later by the landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula early on 25 April. The campaign lasted until January 1916 and was a costly failure for the Allies, with heavy losses (44, 000 dead) and no gains made. Even so, there’s been a lot of debate about why it failed and how important that failure was in the context of the war overall.

The campaign has proved to be historically significant in other ways. A large number of the troops in the Allied force were from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, better known as ANZACs. Gallipoli was the first really high-profile campaign in which they took a leading role. More than 8,700 Australians and 2,779 New Zealanders (over half of all ANZAC troops sent) were killed. Gallipoli has proved to be a key event in Australian and New Zealand history, giving birth to an ANZAC legend which is still enormously important in those countries today.

While the public in Australia and New Zealand were proud of the bravery of their soldiers, there was also anger and dismay at the scale of the losses and an intense desire to find out what went wrong. For many years, the most widely accepted explanation was that the British officers in command at Gallipoli were incompetent, careless and regarded the troops as expendable. Was this impression of the British commanders and their planning fair? If not, why did the campaign go so badly wrong?

The documents in this investigation focus on the planning, communication and coordination in the run-up to the Gallipoli campaign. They tell us about how the commanders prepared and planned. However, if we look closely at the documents they also reveal other factors such as the difficult terrain faced by the Allies and the determination and strong resistance from the Turkish troops - and the Allies’ underestimation of their resilience. It’s important to recognise that we’re only looking at one, albeit crucial, aspect of the campaign in this investigation but you’ll find that the sources do contain references to these other factors, too.

Cape Helles, Gallipoli, 7 January 1916, just prior to the final evacuation of British forces during the Battle of Gallipoli. (© Lt. Ernest Brooks, Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain])

Your challenge

We’ve gathered together some documents from the Churchill Archive and your challenge is to use these documents to investigate the key question: what went wrong at Gallipoli?

Landing of French troops in Moudros

Under Ludendorff and Von Hindenburg, the German army defeated these two Russian armies at the Battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. The Germans pushed the Russians back, but they could not deliver a decisive blow.[2] The result was that by 1915, the eastern front was a mirror of the western front, when huge armies fought a war of attrition, with huge casualty figures. The Ottoman Empire was the dominant power in the Middle East, but it had been virtually pushed out of the Balkans and was widely seen as a power in irreversible decline.

The Ottoman government had allowed German ships to pass through the strategic Dardanelles and into the Black Sea. This move was seen as an act of war, and the Allies declared war on the Ottoman Empire. In response, the Ottoman Sultan said a Jihad or a Holy War against the western allies and Russia. A Russian invasion of Turkey's eastern provinces was defeated, but the Turks could not press home their success.[3] They also managed to limit the British advances in the Persian Gulf. However, the Ottoman Empire's conflict with the allies had reached a stalemate by early 1915.

Strategy of the Allies

The British and the French were appalled by the bloody battles on the western front. They wanted a way that would allow them to attack the Central Powers and, in this way, to provide some relief for the hard-pressed British and French troops in Flanders and Northern France. The British suggested that the allies use their naval superiority to inflict a decisive defeat on the Ottoman Empire. The idea of seizing the Dardanelles Straits was soon mooted after the Ottoman Turks joined the war on the Central Powers' side.[4]

By far the strongest in the world, the British believed that their navy would be able to land a decisive blow against the Turks. The British navy argued that the allies landed a large force of soldiers on the Straits. They would then be in a position to launch an attack on the Ottoman capital of Constantinople. Another one of the campaign's objectives was to secure a sea route to Russian and protect its southern Black Sea flank. It would also allow the western allies to supply the Russian army with badly needed arms and equipment.

The British became convinced that any landing in the area of Constantinople could lead to the Turks withdrawing from their alliance with the Central Powers.[5] The Turkish Empire had arguably been in decline since the eighteenth century, and many of the western powers believed that any attack on it would result in its final destruction. Winston Church, who was Lord of the Admiralty, had great expectations for the assault at Gallipoli; he believed that if the allies seized the Dardanelles that they could open up a new front in the Balkans and even force the Austro-Hungarians to sue for a separate peace and this would lead to the break-up of the Central Powers.[6] The French agreed to the plan, and they contributed a significant sized force to the attack.

However, the operation at Gallipoli was a British Empire undertaking. Apart from sizeable British army units and naval forces, much of the invasion force was composed of units recruited from the Empire. Many of these came from Australia and New Zealand, and they became known as the Anzacs.[7]

Gallipoli Landings

The campaign began with a failed naval attack by British and French ships on the Dardanelles Straits in February-March 1915. Bad luck meant that the Turks discovered the Allied expedition. They mined the Dardanelles as the allies approached, and they destroyed several vessels. The Turks, alerted by the naval attack, began to pour reinforcements into the area. In the wake of the failed naval attack, preparations began for large-scale troop landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The British War Secretary Lord Kitchener appointed General Ian Hamilton as commander of British forces for the operation. Under his command, Hamilton had a very diverse army, had soldiers and marines, from Australia, New Zealand, and the French colonies and British Regiments.

The allies assembled for the invasion on the Greek island of Lemnos. The Turks boosted their defenses in the Straits. The German general Liman von Sanders conducted the defense of the Dardanelles. He predicted that the allies would launch an amphibious operation, and he placed the troops at the points in the Dardanelles Strait. He advised the Ottoman High Command to station Ottoman troops along the Straits' shores. One location he selected was the Gallipoli peninsula.[8] This was to prove correct, and it was this narrow strip of land jutting into the sea was the allies prime objective.[9] On the 25th of April, 1915, the Allies landed their forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Despite suffering heavy casualties, they managed to establish two beachheads. The first was at Helles on the southern of the Peninsula. The other beachhead was at Gaba Tepe that faced the Aegean Sea. Many Anzacs landed here, so many that it came to be called Anzac Cove. The Turks proved to be stubborn fighters and fought for every inch of the Peninsula.[10]

After establishing their beachhead, the Allies made little progress. The Turks sent troops from other fronts to join the battle. There was a bloody stalemate, and thousands of men on both sides died. Both sides fought heroically and often fought to the death.[11] The Allies made landed more troops on the 6th of August at Sulva Bay. This attack coincided with an attempt by the Anzacs to break out of their beachhead at Anzac Cove.

The amphibious landings at Sulva Bay caught the Turks by surprise, and the Allies met little or no opposition. However, the Allied commanders did not press home their advantage. They dug in rather than advance, which allowed the Turks, under their commander Mustafa Kemal, to reorganize and counterattack. Sulva Bay was probably the best chance that the Allies had of defeating the Turks at Gallipoli.[12]

Outcome of the Campaign

British Troops evacuating from W Beach Gallipoli

As the months wore on and as Allied casualties steadily mounted in the Gallipoli Campaign, Churchill, and Hamilton, asked the British High Command to ask for up 100,000 men. The Secretary of War could only afford some 25,0000 men. Hamilton and Churchill wanted to continue the fight. However, as the operation had become a stalemate, the British government decided to end the operation. Hamilton was opposed to any evacuation, as it could lead to massive casualties. Sir Charles Monroe replaced him, and he began plans for an evacuation.[13] He oversaw the evacuation of over 100,000 troops.

The evacuation took place between December and January 1915-1916. The withdrawal was carried out in an orderly fashion with only limited casualties. Exact figures are unknown, but it seems that some 46,000 allied troops died, and almost 180,000 were wounded out of a total force of just under half-a-million men during the campaign. The Turks suffered rather more casualties, with some 65,000 killed and 200,000 wounded.[14]

Reasons for Failure

The Allies were stunned by the failure of the Gallipoli operation. It led to the resignation of Winston Churchill and almost the end of his political career. The campaign was poorly planned and even under-resourced. The commander at Gallipoli, Hamilton, had only five divisions. They had had very little time to train together, which led to a dangerous degree of confusion. These problems reduced the likelihood of success at Gallipoli.[15] It is normally believed that an attack force had to have a clear superiority in numbers, which was not the case at Gallipoli. Then there was the issue of geography and terrain.

The terrain was such that it slowed down the landings and the Allies' subsequent attempts to advance inland. This problem is indicated in the observations of many Australian officers who frequently 'complained about the choice of the battlefield.' [16] There were also severe logistical problems and them were not resolved until much later in the campaign, with the recruitment of porters and workers from Malta and Egypt.

The Allies had failed to anticipate that the Turks would fire on them when they were landing, which meant that they did not seize their objectives early on during the campaign. Then there was the strategy adopted by Sanders. He refused to take a rigid system of defense and instead stressed mobility. He split his forces into three groups to respond to any landing quickly.

Sanders then recommended that the Turkish forces build defenses on the heights surrounding the allied beachheads, which meant that the allies could not break advance inland. However, if the German had listened to Colonel Kemal (later Ataturk), who commanded the 19th Division, the allies could have been decimated. The future founder of Modern Turkey had predicted the exact areas where the allies would land.

Another factor in the failure of the Allies at Gallipoli was a lack of good intelligence. More than one Allied commander complained that they were unsure what the 'situation was on the ground.' [17] The allies did have one chance to grasp some advantage from the Gallipoli landings, and that was at Sulva Bay. If the Generals had been more aggressive, they could have altered the battle in their favor.

Then there was the western allies' continued underestimation of the Turks. The Ottomans had been heavily defeated in many Balkan Wars, and it was assumed that they would flee at the sight of the superior western navies and armies. A sense of western superiority meant that the Allies failed to recognize the capabilities of the Turks.[18]

Conclusion

The Gallipoli campaign was doomed from the start. Too few soldiers were allocated to the landings. Allied intelligence services failed to provide adequate intelligence. For example, they failed to indicate that Gallipoli was not suitable for large-scale landings because of the terrain's nature. The entire operation was poorly planned with little forethought from logistics or what the allies would do if the Turks were waiting for the invaders at the proposed beachheads.

There was also a complete failure to recognize that the Turks would fiercely fight because they were protecting their homeland. This is symbolized by the excellent leadership displayed by the future Ataturk at Sulva Bay and elsewhere. The German commander at Gallipoli also devised a smart strategy, but the allies' failings much helped him.

References

1. ↑ Keegan, John, The First World War (MacMillan, London, 1998), p. 134
2. ↑ Keegan, p. 143
3. ↑ Keegan, p. 153
4. ↑ Moorehead, Alan Gallipoli (Ware, Wordsworth, 1987), p. 56
5. ↑ Moorehead, p. 67
6. ↑ Haythornthwaite, Philip, Gallipoli 1915: Frontal Assault on Turkey. Campaign Series #8 (London: Osprey, 2004), p. 119
7. ↑ Moorehead, p. 78
8. ↑ Laffin, John. Damn the Dardanelles! The Story of Gallipoli(London, Osprey, 1980), p. 68
9. ↑ Haythornthwaite, p. 145
10. ↑ Laffin, p. 121
11. ↑ Haythornthwaite, p. 119
12. ↑ Keegan, p. 156
13. ↑ Strachan, Hew. The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 113
14. ↑ Strachan, p. 113
15. ↑ Keegan, p. 215
16. ↑ Bean, Charles. "The Story of ANZAC from the Outbreak of War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign, May 4, 1915." Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 I (11th ed.) (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1941), p. 67, 89
17. ↑ Bean, p. 119
18. ↑ Erickson, Edward "Strength Against Weakness: Ottoman Military Effectiveness at Gallipoli, 1915." The Journal of Military History 65: 981–1012

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